Yomaira C. Figueroa writes:

“i am called again now. in the wake of huracán maria which has wreaked havoc on our island whose infrastructure was so weak it could only be by design. there was a crisis before this crisis. there was a want before the need and a need before that. we the reaped stand to witness the aftermath from afar. every effort too small. i tend to think that diasporicans are like a moth to a flame when it comes our homeland. we are pulled, hailed, and simultaneously torn away. desterradxs.

“what does it mean to be a colonial subject torn from our home and pulled to it – like the many waves of the atlantic? what does it mean to be erased, disappeared from the archive? colonial subjectship is soul destroying. maddening. enraging. it is the present past. a mind fuck. what’s worse is that the veil of ongoing colonialisms can be so thick that at times like these it is hard to see a way out. but there are cracks. there are ruptures. so we write and resist in/through these ruptures. we search for the disappeared and hold fast to the disappearing. we labor to remember. we we are more than colonial subjects. always more….”

Read: borikén’s present past or the archive of disappearances — YOMAIRA C. FIGUEROA, PH.D.